Because after a few years they complain again when more changes are made because the current game is so good…

Now that’s a good set of patch notes!

Is that not a game designer thing?

I mean, my understanding is that they fired half of their story continuity team, resulting in a published (physical) lore book that makes no sense.

So now I don’t think they are even trying

Druids currently have 7 trees. (And a treeent form)

1 class tree, 4 spec trees and 2 (or is it 3 for druids?) hero trees. Only 3 can be used at any one time though (to be clear as you don’t currently play)

The more possible combinations, the harder it can be to balance though

They can’t write good stories any more, don’t expect good main story, just good side quests.

It still feels like this expansion was too early (as usual) and many classes could have done with more time in the oven (druids and rogues)

On the talents - they realised that they can’t just keep giving us stuff, so they have switched to having some kind of ‘borrowed power’ that gets taken away after the expansion - I think the hero talents are another example of this? Some are shit though and I imagine it’s going to be balance hell (rip boomkins too lol), as they never seem to learn with this stuff.

It’s the endgame group content that actually sells wow for many people (me), so as long as that works and it’s ok balance wise (or alts can be leveled easily) then it’s probably ok for quite a few people though.

Disclaimer: have not got early access, have bought the expansion, but left it really late to decide.

I think he has a budget problem mostly. He has executed some games acceptably, but mostly when the teams were smaller and cheaper. He is an ideas guy you want to pair with an experienced implementer and a pile of money… And maybe a PR team 😆

There was something said (maybe by a youtuber?) about upgrades merging with your town centre or something on a new era (because so much is specific to a single era). Almost like playing 3 games on the same map.

It also implies that tech disparities will be reset twice a game…not sure if that is good or bad.

Also a possibility of a humankind style neolithic era?

But yes, expecting some required DLC unfortunately.

But civ is a patient gamer staple - just wait for 8 to come out and 7’s dlcs will be cheap! 🤣

Interested how the map expansion will work in multiplayer.

Concerned about the era resets.

I like what they appear to have taken from humankind (eras, leader swaps, outposts/yowns, map elevation?) and old world (tile improvements culture bomb)

Also concerned about how the maps seemed to just be cities, no gradual domestication of the world with farms, mines etc.

I would bet that there will be a new space age era added on as a DLC

The ages concern me most though - what progress carries across? Are you going to be going full land grab because your infrastructure resets etc?

There are add-ons that let you play as a decent DPS with an Xbox controller on PC. It’s not beyond possibility.

I sometimes wish that studios would sell their cancelled games to smaller studios that could, if they got it cheap touch it up and release them in some form.

Loads of effort is being wasted for no gain

Link to the original blog post by the developer: https://medium.com/@julianmckinlay/total-war-rome-ii-and-creative-assembly-my-statement-ten-years-on-d964f65b0a8f

There should be options for hard difficulty that are due to the AI being better, not just getting massive buffs.

Some of the examples given were about the AI not even knowing about certain game mechanics!

Direct link to patch notes; https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/patch-notes-1-1-5f1.1687527/

Or this one if the above doesn’t work? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/cities-skylines-2.1147/

Wow, this is a long read. Well worth it for anyone who got caught in Rome TW2’s hype and subsequent disappointment.

Would be good to see what other games he later worked on. Will try to remember to look him up on linkedin when I have time

I just hope (foolishly) that with the current hype that it’s AI will be a focus. I hate that because it cheats things that would work on me don’t work on the AI etc.

It would be really cool if they made an API for the game so people could build their own AI

It’s refering to a defunct games company: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bullfrog_Productions_games

the tournaments one is very well reviewed. The Norse one is worth it if you want to play the Nordics.

Royal Court is mostly only good if you want to make the game easier (you get lots more equitable artifacts etc). It sounds like they are improving this to make the actual court bit more interesting.

The event pack/friend and Foes are normally considered not great, possibly even negative, but it sounds like they are updating them to fix the event frequency.

unsure on the rest.

Do you have integration with other health and fitness apps to retrieve non phone step counts?

I have a Garmin watch that does all my health tracking etc.

Is this the team they moved it to, or the team they moved it from?

Most people who play games are not “gamers” and are not in any kind of community that says not to preorder.

There isn’t a downturn in sales, it’s just the investors?

I assume it’s a interest rate issue?

There was one where I let the murderer dwarf kill someone because I thought I was stealthing closer when apparently I was stealthing away…

That’s the only one I remember off the top of my head. There were a few though, ended up quicksaving a lot in dialogs.

Ay least early on, there were quite a few options in the third act that really didn’t do what you thought they would. I definitely had to reload some saves because of that.

Hopefully it’s better now

You can buy wow tokens with in-game gold, however the tokens are ‘created’ by someone buying one with real money to sell for in-game gold.

So all the wow subs purchased with gold were actually paid for by someone else.

There is a full play through video from PotatoeMcWhiskey that’s good to watch/skip through to get an idea of it.

Look interesting, definitely pulled ideas from lots of places; the ability to form camps outside of cities reminds me of the Civ3 feature for example.

It’s on my look at in the next sale list I think.

I think this was one of the few EULAs I actually read though, mostly to see if I was going to sell my soul to them as part of it.

Did not, but was not disappointed, their lawyers definitely got to have some fun.

Skylines is complicated?!?

Fair enough I guess, have you tried citiesXL? Older and dead but even more of a city painter I believe.

Well, they are not known (recently) for their good overarching stories. I stopped caring about them as they always ruin them (normally by ending expansions ‘early’)

He would have had to agree to the non compete clause though, not sure what happened there…

So much sarcasm in the quick chat 🤣

Even better if you use the new .zip tld as valheim mods are (probably?) Zips?

Is the market not getting saturated at this point? The non old steam deck is ridiculously cheap.

How many companies can make this work at a profitable level?

When I played it enough to fly in spaceship mode instead of plane mode I really enjoyed it. Not tried it recently though.

Is there any way to use bigger ships without paying money?

I assume the salaries are included in the break even?

They bought D&D beyond recently right? So they are not against investing in D&D?

I guess they are not planning a 6th edition and just want the D&D as a service revenue.

That’s a bit of a no-story? Doesn’t even give examples on what people’s problems with the simulation are?

Still kicking around 🙂